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Between 1881 and 1897, Benito Perez Galdos, generallyacknowledged as Spain's greatest nineteenth-century novelist, composed sometwenty "contemporary" novels, which Geoffrey Ribbans characterizes as the peakof his achievement. This monumental study traces the evolution of the manystrands that make up one of them: the long and complex novel Fortunata yJacinta. Ribbans examines the various stages of composition, not only theearlier, reconstructed Alpha version but also subsequent revisions in the muchcorrected handwritten text and in the printer's galleys. He treats thesetentative drafts as part of the process of reaching out toward the coherentdefinitive text. Ribbans's analysis of such devices as the ambiguous role ofthe narrator, the use of free indirect style and direct dialogue, and theconstruction of distinctive ideolects leads to the heart of his study, the developmentof Galdos's characters.